Proposed $1 pokie limit a safer bet

By Jacob Saulwick NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT

22 October 2009 — 12:00am

THE maximum bet on a gaming machine would be cut to $1 and gamblers would be limited to feeding $20 notes into the pokies under changes proposed to the Government yesterday.

Gamblers would also confront self-imposed caps on their losses, among a suite of measures recommended by the Productivity Commission to try to bring the country's high rates of problem gambling under control.

But players would be able to opt out of the cap under the draft proposals, a concession to ''free choice'' that has angered anti-gambling campaigners. The commission's draft report paints poker machines as the major problem in Australia's $18 billion industry.

About 15 per cent of pokie players users were problem gamblers, the commission found. These contributed about 40 per cent of the total spending on poker machines. Another 15 per cent of pokie players were at ''moderate risk.''

Since it last reported into gambling a decade ago, the commission found the various gestures by state governments to limit problem gambling have been largely ineffective.

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The commission said all states should have a cap in place by 2016, when Victoria planned to put in place ''pre-commitment'' technology for pokie players.

It also called for online gaming to be legalised, which would enable the Government to better regulate the industry.

Under a cap system, gamblers would nominate an amount they were prepared to lose. On reaching their limit, there would need to be a ''cooling-off period'' before they could use the machines again, the chairman of the commission, Gary Banks, said.

''We don't have optional seatbelts - why would a safety measure such as this be optional?'' Senator Xenophon said.

Mr Costello, the chief executive of World Vision, said: ''The public policy of state governments is saying we are prepared to sacrifice 15 per cent of regular poker players on the altar of their addiction … for the $4 billion that comes in as revenue.''

Clubs, pubs and state governments relying on revenue and taxes derived from gambling would lose out under the proposed reforms, but the industry would remain large by international standards.

In some cases, the commission said, gamblers were losing more than $65,000 a month playing poker machines. To slow their losses, it recommended cutting the maximum amount that could be fed into machines from as high as $10,000 to $20, and restricting machines to $1 bets.

The report also recommends limiting ATM withdrawals to $200 a day.

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The Government said it would consider the commission's final report, due on February 26. ''We know that we need to make changes but let's base the changes we make on good evidence,'' the Community Services Minister, Jenny Macklin said.